


No Space Among The Clouds

by LaMaupin



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: F/F, Gen, Post-Season 2
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-14
Updated: 2016-02-14
Packaged: 2018-05-20 08:13:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,028
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5998360
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LaMaupin/pseuds/LaMaupin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She walks aimlessly at first. Her only direction is away. Away from Camp Jaha, away from TonDC, away from the ghosts that haunt everyone around her. Away from the guilt and the betrayal and the half hearted sympathy. Away from Lexa. As if putting as much distance as she could between them will fix things. Will fix her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	No Space Among The Clouds

When she walks away from Bellamy, leaving him standing in front of the only home she has left, Clarke doesn’t have a plan. 

For the first time in her life she has no sense of the direction she is taking, of the forces she is putting in motion or the currents she’s being pulled along by. She thought it would be terrifying, that same gut wrenching dread she felt on the drop ship, or maybe freeing, to be rid of conflicting expectations of leadership, allowed to be only herself for the first time in far too long. But she feels nothing. She tries to wonder what it means, but finds she just doesn’t care.

She walks aimlessly at first. Her only direction is away. Away from Camp Jaha, away from TonDC, away from the ghosts that haunt everyone around her. Away from the guilt and the betrayal and the half hearted sympathy. Away from Lexa. As if putting as much distance as she could between them will fix things. Will fix her. 

After five days of walking her legs feel like they’re going to fall off. 

Hiking is a relatively new experience for her. The uneven ground of the tree covered mountains is a far cry from the smooth metal walk ways of the Ark. 

She finds she almost enjoys the physical pain. It distracts her from the dull ache that settled in her chest at Mt. Weather, threatening to choke her with every breath.

She thinks about how difficult that first hike to find Mt. Weather was. About how getting back to the drop ship after they lost Jasper felt like it took all the strength she had. That was the first time she forced herself to stop feeling. Pushing aside her fear and uncertainty for the good of the group. She realizes how much stronger she’s gotten, but she wonders if it was worth it. 

The pain in her legs fades as the days go by. The pain in her heart does not. 

After two weeks of walking she runs out of supplies.

She can provide for herself fairly well by now, but a flash flood washes away half her camp, so she is forced to stop at a trading post for supplies. A stack of pelts gets her a coil of rope, a new flint, a blanket, red stain for her hair. She knows that Bellamy and her mom will be looking for her, but she doesn’t want to be found. Not yet.

She worries about breaking her self imposed exile, about being recognized, but the trading post is small and filled with people with a vested interest in minding their own business. She sees the markings of at least four different clans, and no one spares her a second glance. 

She enjoys the anonymity, being no one important. Even on the Ark she was always someone: the privileged daughter of a councilor, friend to the Chancellor’s son, the only prisoner kept in solitary. 

What would these people think of her if they knew who she was? If they knew what she’d done? 

She doesn’t like to think about it, about all the people she killed. Her people weren’t so different than the Mountain Men after all. They were both the last vestiges of dying civilizations trying desperately to survive in a world where they didn’t belong.

She would like to think that the citizens of the Ark are somehow fundamentally better than the Mountain Men, that there are lines they would not cross for the sake of their own survival. But she has seen too much, done too much, to really believe that.

That night the ghost of her father haunts her dreams. She wakes up glad that he never got to see what she’s become.

After a month of walking she sees the ocean for the first time.

It seems bigger from the ground. She sometimes forgets how big this world actually is, because when it was laid out below the Ark it seemed almost small. And life on the ground somehow seems smaller than life on the Ark ever did. A world comprised of a couple hundred other people. But from here the ocean goes on forever. 

It takes her breath away. She never imagined it would be so beautiful. 

Looking out across the great expanse of water she can let herself pretend that she’s the only person on earth. It’s almost a nice thought. At least then her head wouldn’t be so full of ghosts. 

She wades into the water, letting the waves pull at her legs, wishing it would wash away her guilt and pain and fear. Wishing it could give her back the certainty she once had, before Lexa had stolen so very much from her. But the ocean can’t fix her heart, anymore than it can wash away her sins.

But the cold does reminder her that she’s alive, which is a gift in its own way.

As she watches the sun rise over the water the next morning, painting the sky with colors she never could have imagined, she’s filled with something that isn’t quite hope, but is more than the pain and guilt and betrayal that seem to be the only thing she can feel these days. 

For the first time in a long time she thinks that maybe she’ll be okay. Not yet, maybe not even soon, but eventually. 

After six weeks of walking she hears the name Wanheda for the first time.

She returns to the same trading post for supplies, but the atmosphere is different this time. People are more on edge, regarding anyone they don’t know with suspicion. She sees more Ice Nation than the last time. She doesn’t think much of it at first, as she doesn’t plan on staying here longer than she needs to.

The stain has faded from her hair, marking her as an outsider, and she can feel people staring at her, hear the whispers in her wake. The girl in the outfitter smiles warmly at her while she gathers her supplies (bread, a knife, rope, more hair stain), but she can feel the other people’s furtive glances. 

She clutches her new knife tightly as she leaves, hoping she’s misreading the situation. She had thought she left the whispers behind when she left Camp Jaha, but it seems that she isn’t free from them anywhere. She misses the solitude of the forest.

She hears it for the first time on her way out. Wanheda. The wind carries the whisper to her, but she doesn’t dare look around to see who said it. Ice creeps down her spine and she’s filled by the sudden desire to run away from here and never return. 

Before she can a woman comes up to her, placing herself squarely in Clarke’s path. She tightens her grip on her knife, wondering if this is it. Her only regret, if she dies here, is that no one will ever know, but maybe that’s for the best.

“Mochof Wanheda.” The words are barely above a whisper and the woman never takes her eyes off the ground. She’s gone before Clarke can react. She can’t move for what feels like an eternity as the implication of what she said hits her. She is stunned that anyone is thanking her for what she did. For eradicating an entire civilization. For killing all those people. 

She keeps herself together until she’s back in the forest, alone with the trees. But even here she doesn’t want to fall apart completely. That would be too much like admitting defeat. And she can’t afford to show such weakness. If she has learned anything on the ground it’s that even the trees have ears. So she lets her instincts take hold and runs. She runs until she can’t run anymore. But she can’t outrun the blood on her hands. 

Commander of Death. That’s what she’s become. That’s what Lexa made her into. 

Her pain turns to anger. Anger at the Mountain Men for hurting her friends. Anger at her people for looking at her differently after she did what no one else was willing to do. Anger at Lexa for betraying her and making her into Wanheda. Anger at herself for letting her. 

It makes her feel strangely at peace, because the anger is better than the pain. Anger she can deal with. Anger she knows. 

Her ghosts still haunt her, but now they stop telling her she deserves the pain and start clamoring for vengeance. 

After two months of walking she finds the ruins of the old world.

She emerges from the woods to find the remains of a gigantic roadway, two hundred feet across and covered in rusted out automobiles. She’s seen the remains of paved roads and even a few automobiles before, usually half buried in the forest, but never so many in one place. 

The road is uneven, with broken slabs of pavement being forced up by trees sprouting between the cars. Parts of it have been completely reclaimed by nature, but parts are still intact enough to walk on, and she weaves her way between the cars, following the roadway south and east.

She’s used to finding the relics of the world as it was before the war by now. The old monuments that have been reclaimed by the earth are a common sight, but this feels different. The road is a glimpse into what this place was before the war. A reminder of just how far humanity has fallen. And just how far they have come. 

She wonders what it must have been like, on the road, before the final bombs fell. To know that death was unavoidable but trying to escape it anyways. To watch your world burn. But then again, she watched her entire world fall from the sky, so maybe she isn’t so different.

Any useful supplies were stripped from the cars long ago, but the bodies remain. Mummified corpses stare at her out of the cars that have become their tombs. Bones litter the pavement, bleached white from a century in the sun. 

There is a strange sort of peace in traveling with the dead. They ward off her ghosts. Maybe she is the Wanheda after all, and these are her people.

After three days of following the road she can see Polis in the distance, lit up by the eternal flame on the top of the commander’s tower.

She bids goodbye to her silent companions on the road, and heads towards the city, drawn to it by something she can’t quite name. Or at least, doesn’t want to.

She finds herself thinking about Lexa almost against her will as her feet carry her to the top of a hill overlooking the city. Her anger returns as she looks down at Polis laid out below her. It’s Lexa who made her into this. Wandering this godforsaken planet more comfortable with the dead than the living. Haunted by all the people she couldn’t save. 

More than anything she wishes she could go back to before the mountain. Before Lexa betrayed her, to those few bright moments when Lexa felt like the only good thing in the entire world and she had let herself believe that maybe there was salvation for her on the ground. 

But she can’t change the past. She can run from it all she wants but she knows that it will catch up to her eventually. 

Standing there, watching the fires of the city light up the night, she can no longer pretend that she didn’t love Lexa. A part of her still does, which only makes it harder, more painful. Maybe she was right, and love really is weakness. 

She stares at the burning tower for a long time. Part of her wants to storm in and confront Lexa. To yell and scream and rage. But what would that accomplish? Lexa made her decision. She walked away. She left Clarke utterly alone with a mountain full of ghosts. 

So Clarke makes her own decision. She swallows her anger and pain, turns her back on the city, and keeps walking.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Lover to Lover by Florence + The Machine. Whatever you do, don't listen to Ceremonials and think about Clexa. Don't do it. (Totally do it).


End file.
